Matty Bovan no longer needs an introduction. After making his way up London's womenswear ranks under Fashion East’s initiative, the designer made his solo debut at LFW in February. Since then, he’s walked at Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, and appeared with Dame Viv herself on the cover of the latest issue of Dazed.
Before presenting his next collection later this year, Bovan has released a new zine – his second – entitled NEED4MEAD. “This zine isn’t about clothes, it’s about characters,” Bovan explains to us. “I really wanted to expand my visual landscape and narrative further than I ever have.” Enlisting not one, but two photographers – Dexter Lander and Lucy Alex Mac – the zine was shot around York, Hartlepool, and Manchester. With two different photographers, half of the zine is upside down to separate them.
Although the zine features new looks created especially for it, he was keen to not make fashion the focus. “I wanted the garments to take a back seat,” Bovan says. “I wanted it to feel timeless and not to be pigeonholed in a fashion time scale. You can’t tell when this is supposed to be taking place – the future or the past.”
The zine itself has a medieval feel when it comes to the setting, but could also be set in the future too. Bovan appears along with artist Rory Mullen – who he collaborated with to create what he refers to as the “breadman”. Imagine a person covered in slices of white bread that are sellotaped together, because that’s exactly what it is. “It looks so pagan and I am in love with breadman,” Bovan explains. “It’s primitive and modern – white, trashy bread.
Fans of Bovan’s fashions can look forward to his SS19 collection in September, and potentially more zines in the future. “We shot so much, I think we cut the zine down to a third of what it was,” he says. “We could make two more whole new ones!”